KPMG audit report deepens scrutiny of Ghana’s SML contract

KPMG’s audit of Ghana’s Ghana Revenue Authority and Strategic Mobilisation Limited arrangement found that six of seven agreements lacked Public Procurement Authority approval and that Parliament had not approved the contracts as required for enforceability under the Public Financial Management Act. That conclusion turned a technical review into a live political controversy, with the report now being used to argue over whether the deal should be regularised, cancelled or pushed into deeper investigation.

The pressure around the contract had already been building since December 2023, when The Fourth Estate said the government was paying SML about US$100 million a year, or roughly US$1 billion over 10 years, for revenue assurance work in the downstream petroleum sector. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo appointed KPMG on Dec. 29, 2023, to audit the GRA, the Ministry of Finance and SML transactions, then suspended the performance contract in January 2024 while the review was underway.

The report landed on March 27, 2024, but its full release became another point of dispute. The presidency initially refused the Media Foundation for West Africa’s request for the document on May 7, then published the full report on May 22 after waiving its right to withhold it in the interest of transparency, openness and honesty with the public. For KPMG, that meant its findings moved from an internal audit file into the center of Ghana’s public debate over procurement compliance and parliamentary oversight.

According to the published summaries, KPMG said no technical needs assessment was done before SML was engaged. It also pointed to earlier warnings from the Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors, an Ernst & Young audit commissioned by the GRA in 2021 and a Ministry of Finance revenue assurance report, all of which had flagged possible underreporting and revenue leakages. The audit said SML had only partially performed under the contracts under review and had received about GH¢1,061,054,778 from 2018 to the time of the audit.

KPMG stopped short of recommending that the arrangements be voided immediately. Instead, it called for an “orderly resolution” and parliamentary regularisation, a narrower remedy than outright cancellation. SML disputed the GH¢1,061,054,778 figure, saying it was cited without accounting for its investments and taxes paid during the period. Manasseh Azure has argued that the audit report and its release provide enough evidence of wrongdoing, deepening the scrutiny on a contract that has become a test of how seriously public-sector procurement rules are enforced in Ghana.